Southern Exposure

Be wary. It used to happen only in autumn, but now it’s with us throughout the year: Ad agencies from all parts of the southern U.S. beckon us thither with promises of sunny climes, easy living, and quaint cultural experiences. “Join the New South,” these agencies command. “See for yourself what we have to offer.” I say, don’t be lured by false promises. Much of Mississippi is a kudzu-infested swamp; South Carolina elects people who would be turned down for having bad taste even by reality shows; stay in rural northern Florida for more than a month, and you’ll be leached of every intelligent thought you ever had. Heed the following warnings.

Weather
The weather is probably the first thing you’ll notice when arriving in the South. A common phrase expressing the weather is, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity.” This phrase is only partially true: In the South, it’s the heat and the humidity, both of which not infrequently hover in the 90’s. Imagine yourself trying to walk in a huge vat of semi-congealed Jell-O®. It’s easy to understand why many Southerners speak, walk, and react very slowly, if at all.

Bugs
You might not notice the presence of bugs in the South right away; that’s because you’re probably accustomed to bugs attaining a size no bigger than one of your toes, and you mistake the real southern bugs for rodents or foreign automobiles.

Face a few unpleasant facts about southern bugs. First is their quantity: There are approximately 25 trillion bugs within striking distance of you at any given moment; in the evening that number increases by half.

Second is their diversity and cunning: The common tick is about as big as your thumbnail, but it burrows into a vulnerable part of your body like a rabid strip miner and hangs on with little tick teeth. If you attempt to pluck the tick from your body, its head will remain clutched to the attacked area, not dissimilar from a tiny Pac-Man. As a contrast, the mammoth palmetto bug, a relative of the cockroach that feeds on dogs and small children, often gains admittance to homes by knocking on doors late at night and pretending to be a Seventh-Day Adventist.

The third fact is southern bugs’ general loathsomeness. You’ll appreciate this after spending numerous restless nights with a background of crickets rubbing their hind legs together in an orgy of orthopteran dissonance; or waking up in the morning with your leg half-devoured by fire ants; or entering the washroom at a Kentucky Fried Chicken only to find all the stalls occupied by giant water beetles.

Bug spray is no solution. The first generation dies from it, the second tolerates it, and the third is addicted to it. And, since a typical bug generation is about 45 minutes, you’d better think of bugs as guests, not pests.

Language
Southerners speak many different dialects, few of which are comprehensible to anyone reared outside the South. Given that Southerners distrust outsiders more than they do the disabled, your best strategy is to feign being a deaf-mute.

Some points to remember: “Hair yew” is not an indigenous tree, but rather a common greeting, often preceded by “Howdy,” thus, “Howdy, hair yew.” The number of syllables in any standard English word automatically increases by at least 50% in many southern dialects. Thus, “Bill” becomes “Be-ill,” “airport” becomes “ay-er-pote,” “Black” becomes “Neeg-ra” or “kul-id,” and “President Barack Obama” becomes “!@#$%^&*” (Two exceptions to this rule are “Co-cola,” which loses one syllable, and “sumbitch,” which loses two syllables).

Food
Southern food is either boiled in salted pork fat, fried in salted pork fat, or boiled and then fried in salted pork fat. For many years, sponges were used in place of napkins on dinner tables, and only in the past ten years or so have flat plates been more common than bowls. It is the belief of Southerners that the true test of the worth of a food is how far it slides on a sheer surface. Southern food is the only cuisine in America that glistens.

Politics
The political spectrum in the South for the most part ranges from Fundamentalist Christians and the Ku Klux Klan on one end to a moderate form of militarism somewhat akin to the Visigoths on the other. In some sections of the South, you are forbidden to smoke, drink, dance, swear, or look at a person of the opposite sex. The unpleasantry in Iraq is viewed with regret that we did not nuke the entire subcontinent, George W. Bush is revered as a moral compass, and a minority is anyone not a member of the National Rifle Association. In the South, creationism is a science, homosexuality is a horror, and, for some folks, voting is a hazard.

Culture
Culture in the South must be divided into formal and informal pastimes. Formal pastimes are going to drive-in restaurants, watching TV sitcoms and athletic events, fishing and hunting (for men), cooking and having babies (for women), and listening to country-western songs on the radio.

Shooting guns—which are considered natural extensions of limbs—falls into both formal and informal pastimes. Formal: shooting a muskrat. Informal: accidentally shooting yourself while cleaning your gun.

Granted, these descriptions don’t apply to all southerners. And many people like the South, some of whom actually live there. But don’t be misled by unscrupulous descriptions of what’s below the Bible Belt. I’ve been there; it’s not pretty.